My colleague Frank Foy, who has died after a long illness aged 63, was a tenacious champion of working people suffering from industrial diseases. A lawyer at Thompsons Solicitors, which acts almost exclusively for trade union members, Frank carved out a reputation as a dogged litigator who refused to allow employers off the hook.

He spent much of his professional life winning the best possible compensation for employees whose hearing had been impaired in heavy industry, particularly shipbuilding on the Tyne. He was instrumental in the mid-1980s in negotiating the groundbreaking industrial deafness scheme, which enabled workers to secure substantial compensation without the prolonged involvement of lawyers. More recently, he had worked on behalf of cancer sufferers who contracted the disease after being exposed to asbestos at work.

In both cases, employers and their insurance companies fought for years to question the source of workers' illnesses and disabilities and to minimise the compensation they would eventually have to pay. Frank's commitment made a huge difference to thousands of working families.

Frank was also a bon vivant. He liked good food, good wine and good clothes. He had a particular weakness for shoes, of which he had a large collection. We all thought he inherited those traits from his Italian mother, who was from Padua. Frank was also blessed with a dry wit, which his colleagues thought might have been inherited from his Mancunian father who was of Catholic Irish stock. His family on his father's side were miners.

Frank was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester, and did not go to university. After leaving the local school, he was taken on by the solicitors James Chapman & Co in Manchester, which worked on behalf of insurance companies in personal injury cases. While there he attended a legal executive course. He described hearing a conversation between lawyers at that time, during which they laughed about the scene of an accident where all the evidence had been removed. He did not find it funny, and his keenness to act for working people was reinforced.

As a consequence, in 1970 Frank joined WH Thompson in Manchester, where he was responsible for increasingly important cases. While at the firm he attended law school and qualified as a solicitor. His great strength, apart from his tenacity, was his ability to get on with people. He was also instrumental in changing the structure and approach of Thompsons, turning it into a far more professional organisation.

Frank is survived by his wife Munju and two sons, Daniel and Kevin, from his first marriage.